Welcome to the September Newsletter

Well, here we are in Autumn and moving inexorably towards Winter. I wonder what it’s going to bring us this year, rain or a mountain of Snow. Wouldn’t it be great to have a traditional white Christmas (probably not!). Since my last newsletter I’ve been on the circuit doing writers ‘stuff.’

Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival

In July I attended the annual crime writers’ festival in Harrogate sponsored by Theakstons. This is the largest crime writers’ annual festival and attracts all the big crime fiction authors from the UK & elsewhere. There were plenty of celebrity authors attending this year’s annual festival, Peter James, Richard Osman, Dorothy Koomson  and Harriet Tyce to name a few.

Fortunately, the weather held and it was warm and sunny all weekend. It’s difficult to estimate the number of crime fiction enthusiasts in attendance, but it seems to gets bigger every year and the Swan Hotel makes the most of its association with Agatha Christie with a plaque on the wall.

Northants Authors Group – Talk to Residential Homes

I’ve also done an event for Northants Authors, talking to residential care homes. This time it was to Squires Mews on the Kettering Road, Northampton.
Book sales don’t generally materialise at events like these, but in most cases residents are usually engaged – if I’ve not sent them to sleep.
(because I’m so boring, obviously:))
The staff are always kind and helpful and I even bumped into an old colleague (not a resident!).

Morgen Bailey is a long time author friend who now lives in Buckinghamshire, and works as an editor, teacher of creative writing and published in her own right. She invited me to take part in her author spotlight interviews as part of her training course on Teachable.com. My interview took place recently and can be viewed via this link.

‘Without Fear or Favour
and Other Stories

Anthology – Coming Soon.

I’ve never really been a short story writer, it doesn’t agree with my general verbosity. But as I reported in my last blog, I’ve been having some difficulty with the book. I decided to try my hand and some short form writing and sat down to write some short stories. I applied a theme to most the stories about personal conflict with oaths taken.

The title of the anthology is called ‘Without fear or favour’ a reference to the original oath taken by a police officer when attested as a Constable before a magistrate.

There will be four stories

1) Two Police stories – Without fear of favour, malice or ill will.

2) A Priest – A confessional dilemma

3) A doctor – The Hippocratic oath.

I’ve added a couple of stories I wrote a long time ago when I thought I would write about Sci Fi and the paranormal. I’ve tidied them up a bit, but they are as I originally wrote them.

5th INSTALMENT NOW AVAILABLE

How I write is the 5th instalment of the first series, is now available for you to listen to and is available from my website Follow the link here.

This time we’re talking about Methods used in writing and how I develop my stories.

The Podcast will also be available on my YouTube Channel @Five-2-EightMedia